History and furnishings
The imposing church that stands above the vineyards is first mentioned in the records in 1542. The original building, attested by its Gothic bell tower, was raised in its entirety during the Baroque era; the interior was vaulted and, in 1742, painted with frescoes — which in 1930, when the nave walls were also marbleised, were considerably overpainted.
On the outside the building is relatively plain; only the octagonal bell tower stands out. We enter the high, spacious and bright nave beneath a Baroque-shaped choir loft with an undulating balustrade, on which stands the organ decorated with Rococo ornamentation, built in 1766 by the Maribor organ-maker Simon Otoničer (1730–1784).
The church is painted almost in its entirety, and the iconographic programme is in one way or another tied to rural life and labour — above all to viticulture — and to the church's patron. On the triumphal-arch wall, above a built-in pulpit, is a painting of the Conversion of St. Paul, and on the right side the martyrdom of St. John of Nepomuk, patron of priests and against the dangers connected with water. At the apex of the triumphal arch is an architectural-figural painting with a personification of Glory. On the rear wall of the presbytery a high altar is painted, into which is set an oil painting of St. Margaret of Antioch. The patron saint of mothers in childbirth and of farmers, whose feast falls on 20 July, is also shown in the presbytery beside an idealised view of the Ritoznoj church. At the top of the altar are painted figures of the Virtues, and on the wall above the altar a group of the Coronation of the Virgin. In front of the high altar stands a fine Rococo tabernacle from the late 1760s or 1770s. It is adorned with a contemporaneous painting of Our Lady of Good Counsel, the work of the Styrian Baroque painter Anton Jožef Lerchinger (c. 1720 – after 1787).
The two side altars in the nave are also painted. In 1756, alongside Margaret's altar, the records mention altars of St. Donatus and of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. In a wine-growing locality where vines were cultivated for the Rittersberger wine (today's Ritoznojčan), the choice of a patron against storms and of intercessors invoked for a better harvest is to be expected. Today the altars are dedicated to St. Anthony the Hermit, patron of livestock-rearing, and to St. George, bringer of spring; their depictions, however, do not artistically reach the standard of the other paintings in the church. The first is accompanied on the altar by St. Martin and St. Urban, patrons of viticulture and winegrowers, and beside the second stand the painted figures of St. Notburga, patroness of farmers, and St. Ursula, patroness of a good marriage and of the sick. With its fine Baroque architecture, furnishings and painting — which, through later overpainting, has somewhat lost its excellence — the Church of St. Margaret ranks among the more important monuments of immovable cultural heritage in the wider Slovenska Bistrica area.